Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel driver Khalid al-Balooshi celebrates Sunday’s win in the Sonoma, California Winner’s Circle.
After weeks of saying the team was getting better and returning to form, Khalid alBalooshi put the gold car in the winner’s circle on Sunday for the Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel team, the three-time and defending World Championship team owned by His Excellency Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani. With his second win of the season in hand, alBalooshi wants to keep a good thing going and try to move up in the point standings at this weekend’s 27th annual O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Northwest Nationals near Seattle the 16th of 24 races making up the United States’ 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series. Qualifying is set for tomorrow and Saturday with eliminations scheduled for Sunday.
For al-Balooshi, last weekend’s success started with the first run the team made last Friday afternoon in Sonoma, California. With unseasonably warm weather conditions, most teams smoked the tires in Friday afternoon qualifying, but al-Balooshi went right down the track. It was a harbinger of things to come. He ended up as the No. 8 qualifier, but on race day, al-Balooshi was stellar. In the first round of eliminations, he dazzled the crowd with the quickest run of the entire day. From there, it was a steady march to a final-round matchup with his teammate, reigning World Champion Shawn Langdon. While Langdon was ahead early, al-Balooshi reached the finish line first for his second win of the season and the fourth of his career.
“Last weekend was a very good race for our team,” al-Balooshi said. “It was good to win the race for everybody on our team. I have been saying we have our hot rod back, and last week, we were one of the best cars in the show. Jason (crew chief Jason McCulloch) told me he found something in the tune-up. He told me, ‘Balooshi, the car is not going to smoke the tires. The car will go down the track.’ The car did exactly what Jason said it would do.”
Last month in Norwalk, Ohio, al-Balooshi entered the race as the defending champion. He qualified 10th and lost in the first round of eliminations. However, his only race day run was a brilliant pass. It looked like the team was back, but then it endured another first-round loss in Denver two weeks ago.
“At Norwalk, Jason told me, ‘Balooshi, we found our car,” al-Balooshi remembered. “We have our race car back.’ After that we went to Denver and had to change everything on the car to run on the mountain. In Sonoma, we did not forget what we found in Norwalk. We have our hot rod back.”
When he won the first race of the season back in February, al-Balooshi was the Top Fuel points leader for the first time in his career. After the first-round loss in Denver two weeks ago, the team dropped to ninth place in the NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel point standings and was very close to 10th place. Only the top-10 teams in the point standings make the Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs. With Sunday’s win, al-Balooshi moved back up to eighth place in points, but more importantly, he is now 60 points ahead of 10th place and 181 points heads of the 11th place driver.
“I feel way better about the points now,” al-Balooshi said. “Before last race, I was not sure we would make the top 10 (Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs). I was thinking about it. We started the year No. 1 and then went down to No. 9 and very close to No. 10. I did not know what was going on. After Sonoma, we are in much better place in the points. We still need to get better and better and better.
“In Seattle, we need to keep it going. We have a good car. We need to keep winning rounds. We need to keep thinking we have a championship car. We can fight for the win because we have a championship car.”